Refugee Resettlement—Francophone Minority Communities

Hon. Claudette Tardif:

Honourable senators, we know that the federal government’s goal is to ensure that, by 2023, French-speaking newcomers represent at least 4.4 per cent of all immigrants who settle outside Quebec. Unfortunately, the interim Commissioner of Official Languages told us on May 12, 2017, that the federal government did not take into account the impact of resettling Syrian refugees in francophone minority communities. In her opinion, the department never tried to find out the needs of francophone minority communities at any point in the process, and she gave many examples of proposals submitted by francophone settlement agencies that were rejected.

Leader, doesn’t this situation call into question how serious the government is about meeting its own targets for francophone immigration outside Quebec?

The Hon. Lillian Eva Dyck, B.A. Hon, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Senator Lillian Dyck was appointed to the Senate in 2005 by Prime Minister Paul Martin as representative of Saskatchewan. Before her appointment, Senator Dyck was one of Canada’s leading neurochemists, whose research was instrumental in the development and patenting of new drugs to aid in the treatment of diseases such as Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s.